Posts by Lisa Duddington, co-founder and head of research at Keep It Usable

Secrets to successful attention

Everyone wants it. How can you make it work to your advantage? Read on…

The 10 minute rule

People’s ability to pay attention greatly decreases after 10 minutes. This is bad news if you’re a teacher or if you do a lot of presentations at work. However, what you can do is design your presentations with this rule in mind so that you do something at each 10 minute interval to re-engage your audience.

Multi-tasking is a myth

Did you know that we can’t actually multi-task? What actually happens is the brain switches between tasks in quick succession because it functions sequentially.

It’s more efficient and effective to do one thing at once

It takes you 50% longer to complete a task if it’s interrupted because the brain has to carry out four time consuming steps each time you switch tasks. Studies show that you’ll also make about four times more errors.

Sex, food and danger

When we were cavemen (and women!) life was hard so our brains learnt to respond to the 3 basic things that kept us alive. Sex ensured the continuation of our species. Acquiring food and avoiding danger kept us alive. Although we’re not cavemen anymore our brains still respond to these 3 stimuli. That’s why you see these constantly in adverts – brands play on these as they work on a subconscious level.

Why not think about the above and how you can apply them to your work to get more effective results and make more efficient use of your time.

More from Uncategorized

Here are some fun insights into what your smartphone says about you. After reading this, I think my next phone will be an iPhone! Source And just when you think things couldn’t get worse… sorry fellow Android users, it seems the world thinks we’re alcoholic chavs! Source Note: Under-weight and over-weight refers to the statistics and… Continue Reading

Fact: Anyone can sit with a user and ask the user to carry out some tasks on a product. So, in principle, anyone can do usability testing. But: Quality usability testing that delivers reliable results is different. Quality usability testing requires skills like empathy and curiosity. It requires profound knowledge of recruiting, creating good test tasks, moderating… Continue Reading